"Full oft I muse, and be's in thocht;
How this false world is aye on flocht,"
till he came to the door of Meg Johnston's cottage. He found it deserted; and then stalked on to honest John Simson's, which was in like manner empty.
"What can this mean?" he said to himself, as he bent his long steps to Wat Webster's, where fearful messengers, as we have seen, had already preceded him. "My person has lost its charm, my converse its interest, and my drink its spirit-stirring power. But we shall see what Wat Webster and his Dame Kitty, and the fair Marion, say to the residue of my authority. Ah, Marion, as I think of thee—
"'How heises and bleizes
My heart wi' sic a fyre,
As raises these praises
That do to heaven aspire.'"
"Ha! ha! I will there outdevil all my devilries. My fire-chariots have as yet flown off without a passenger; but this night I shall not go home alone."
And he continued striding onwards in the deserted and silent passage, till he came to Wat Webster's, where the collected inmates were all huddled together round the fire, in that state of alarm produced by the intelligence of Christy Lowry and Widow Lindsay, and already partly set forth by us heretofore. Bang up went the door.
"A good new year to ye all!" said he, as he stalked into the middle of the apartment.
There was a dead silence throughout the company. Marion was the only individual that dared to look him in the face; and there was an expression in her eye that seemed to have the effect of increasing the boisterous glee of his mysterious manner.
"Here we are once more, again," he continued, as he took out the eternal imp-shaped bottle, and clanged it on the table.
Every eye was fixed upon him as if watching his motions and evolutions. Meg Johnston was busy in a corner, defending herself, by drawing a circle round her; Widow Lindsay was clinging close to the figure of the Virgin that was placed against the wall by her side; Jenny Wilson sought refuge in the arms of honest John; Wat Webster himself got his hand placed upon an old Latin Bible, not one word of which he could read; and some followed one mode of self-defence, and some another, against the expected efforts of the stranger, whose proceedings at his other places of call had been all related at Wat Webster's, with an exaggeration they perhaps stood little in need of. The stranger cared nothing for these indications, not a cinder; and took no notice of them.